


Pride and Procrastination

by areyoufeelingalice



Category: AUSTEN Jane - Works, Pride and Prejudice & Related Fandoms, Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen
Genre: Alternate Universe - College/University, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, F/F, F/M, Lizzy is left alone with her thoughts, Slice of Life
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-23
Updated: 2020-08-23
Packaged: 2021-03-06 18:21:04
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,858
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26073328
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/areyoufeelingalice/pseuds/areyoufeelingalice
Summary: Lizzy is very busy. She has a term paper to write.So naturally, she is very busy procrastinating that.And obviously not, conveniently at the same time, procrastinating thinking about a certain someone, a certain text message left on read, and, worse, her own feelings on the matter.She is very busy not thinking about that.Which, as usually the case, is working out really well.
Relationships: Elizabeth Bennet & Charlotte Lucas, Elizabeth Bennet/Fitzwilliam Darcy, William Collins/Charlotte Lucas
Comments: 4
Kudos: 44





	Pride and Procrastination

**Author's Note:**

> This obviously not a product of my own procrastination of a term paper.

It is a truth universally acknowledged that any term paper in want of a good grade must be in possession of a compelling beginning.

Lizzy really had to think of a way to start the paper off good. The introduction had to be great. Creative and intriguing. Starting with a fitting quote was a common strategy, but the first sentence and chapter were both vital. Professor Firth was infamous for judging fast whether he liked something or not, and then he won’t budge from his first impressions. He was a great professor, but a stubborn one, with a determined set of values and his good opinion, once lost, was lost forever. Sighing, Lizzy let her head drop on the desk, on her arms, burying her face as not to stare at the screen anymore, from where the near empty document stared back. Her notes were scattered all around her, on the desk, on the floor, on top of the books piled up everywhere.

It was not that she disliked her topic—she loved Shakespeare and after all she had chosen the topic herself—or that she hadn’t done anything yet. She had reread the play twice and obviously not procrastinated the real work in the process. She had watched She’s the man, a Twelfth Night retelling, so that obviously totally counted as work for her term paper. Same with the student drama group adaptation set in a hotel, which she had found on YouTube. And the other three adaptations she watched. All those had also been great distractions from hi—no, from the actual work of course.

Eventually she had then compiled and read the secondary literature, though more thanks to Charlotte dragging her along to the library. At any rate, she now had a huge amount of notes and a fairly good idea of the whole thing. That wasn’t too bad.

But now the actual writing part. She was full on back in procrastination mode. Her long stagnant Doctor Who fanfiction had three new chapters, the next one was half-written as well and her bookmarks on ao3 had increased significantly. Just like her collection of self-made bracelets. 

She could just send some of those to her sisters later. Jane would love that. To her Lizzy had already given two of the new designs—they were sharing a flat after all. The others, well, Lydia at least would only frown but Jane insisted all of them liked getting her bracelets nonetheless. Lizzy wasn’t so sure about that. Unlike Jane’s, the angel that she was, Lizzy’s relationship with her sisters was strained at best. They would always quarrel, or not talk at all. Mary shutting herself in her room, Kitty running outside and Lydia—well. Maybe she should just put the bracelets on her and Charlotte’s Etsy page after all.

Feeling guilty, she had, after a day or two, also concentrated on Twelfth Night again, but by writing fanfiction: a retelling but make it sci-fi. Hey, she worked with Twelfth Night, that totally counted as work on her term paper. At least she was busing her mind, not thinking about—  
Term paper, Twelfth Night, introduction. Abruptly sitting up again, she started typing. "Some are born great, some achieve greatness and some—," she stopped. No, that didn’t fit her topic, not at all. It might be the best-known quote from this play but thus totally overused and more importantly, once you know the context, not all that great anymore. Sighing, again, she deleted what she wrote, again. These days, her writing only flowed while writing fanfiction. Which normally only happens rarely—the magic of procrastinating something else.

The truth she didn’t want to acknowledge was that she wasn’t even sure what exactly she was procrastinating. Just her term paper—or dealing with a certain idiot. An idiot, no more. The message did not change anything. Always busying herself, her mind. Yeah, maybe even working on her paper. A bit at least.

The minutes passed and by now she had switched to staring out of the window blankly after typing another half sentence and as usual immediately deleting it. Her mind wandered again. Briefly, very briefly, while she hadn’t paid attention to not thinking about him, her thoughts had started to wander towards a certain text message she had left on read but still knew by heart now—yeah, so much for not thinking about it, about him—before she regained control and forced her mind on other things. Back to planning her retelling fic.

Her phone finally ripped her from her chaotic thoughts. She could hear it vibrate somewhere vaguely behind her, from the corner of the room to where she had banished it in order to focus on her writing. Not that it had worked very well.

Her gaze wandered over her shoulder and she glanced in the direction of the phone. Maybe Charlie would want to go for coffee? It was tempting to think about. Never mind that she actually had coffee in her TARDIS-cup sitting next to her. Cold, but coffee.

In a matter of mere seconds, a plan formed in Lizzy’s head. Coffee at their usual place, and then maybe go thrifting—they hadn’t gone in ages—and afterwards home, order food and a Keira Knightley movie night. Given their shared ever-lasting crush on Keira, this would always work. And properly occupy Lizzy’s mind, stopping her from thinking about him or his me—from worrying and stressing about her term paper.

She was enthusiastically half-way across the room before she remembered that Charlotte wouldn’t have time today. Not because of the term paper—as usual, Charlie had already finished hers and just waited for Lizzy to read over it. But Charlie was at her girlfriend’s today. Doing a marathon on documentaries—Coleen’s suggestion, obviously—while Charlie did her braids. And from experience Lizzy knew that took time. They had often had done Doctor Who marathons together, Lizzy keeping Charlotte company while she braided her own hair. It still always amazed Lizzy, the turnout was gorgeous, with always changing colours added in true Charlie fashion. Lizzy obviously was not a bit jealous that Coleen kept her company now, not at all.

Lizzy really couldn’t understand how Charlie could deal with Coleen and her constant talking and lecturing all the time. Hell, Lizzy was kind of nerdy herself, but Coleen Williams really took it to another level. When she wasn’t busy with reading, podcasts, or documentaries, she was talking non-stop about exactly those, all the facts that she had learned. And for some reason Lizzy was sure no one understood, she certainly didn't, Charlie and Coleen were the new dream-couple. Almost a month now. She missed spending most of her time with Charlie. Lizzy really tried her best to be happy for her but Coleen was just too much. Lizzy now wasn’t so keen on the idea of spending time with the two of them. Especially after what happened last time she was with them.

She had known that he was Coleen’s cousin. So that he turned up at her birthday dinner should not have surprised her. But it had caught her off guard. Add Coleen’s obnoxious stepmom to the mix and that really wasn’t a good day for Lizzy to begin with. But then what he told her on the balcony later that night. She definitely couldn’t have anticipated that. No matter what Charlie and Jane said.

Her surge of energy gone now, Lizzy slowly finished her way across the room and without any motivation left for anything grabbed her phone to check the notification. Immediately all the tension was back. New tweet from @WD_Pemberley. Of course. Speak of the devil.

Somewhat shakily she drew in a breath. So much for not thinking about him. Though not really wanting to, she just couldn’t help herself and automatically opened the tweet. She had to read it.

“Just finished the final bits of my work for this semester. Now it’s not long until I will see my sister @Jo_The_Best_Darcy again. Who as usual cannot be bothered to pick of the phone so I could tell her this directly. I love you, Jo, but please pick up the phone?”

That-that was actually really cute. Even beside that stupidly serious profile picture of his. And of course the idiot had already gotten all his work done. Though as a hotel management student he wrote more exams than term papers, right? Whatever. Her face had softened while reading and unconsciously, a small smile started to spread—NO!

Determined to get her mind off him, she put down the phone, maybe a bit too quickly and too forcefully. Newly energised out of pure spite, she got into action. She grabbed her cup from the desk and went to the kitchen, filled it up with milk before adding lots of ice cubes.

Gritting her teeth, Lizzy returned to the desk, sat down, took a sip of her now iced coffee—much better—and focussed on the open document again. She would get this done. She would write her term paper. And she would write a good one. She was a good student, not just tolerable, and she was proud of that. This was her final work to be done this semester beside proof-reading Charlie’s paper and then she could leave town and not have to think about him. Not be reminded of him anywhere.

Their aunt Gardiner had promised to take Jane and Lizzy with them on vacation once their semester and all the work was done. Jane had an internship in town and would stay with their other aunt but that was no reason Lizzy couldn’t go. A sight-seeing tour across the country and then just relaxing in that fancy hotel they booked. She didn’t know any details, her aunt had only said something about a big hotel at a huge lake and carriage rides. It just sounded great. Maybe she could even catch up a bit on her tbr pile… okay, who was she kidding, the pile will only grow, but a girl can dream, right? At any rate, a relaxing, drama-free vacation was exactly what she needed and she would get it!

So she would find a good opening—maybe she could use "this is very midsummer madness?" no, that might fit her mood but not her paper—and write an amazing paper, about a play she actually loved; she had to remind herself of that. Focussing only on the paper, not thinking of anything else, not him, not about any of the drama they were involved in, not even about missing Charlie (admittedly, he hadn’t really anything to do with that though she would love to blame him).

And then she was gone from here, from Netherfield University, at least for a while. She could even mute twitter—she wouldn’t, she knew that, but she preferred lying to herself, busy as she was thinking about not thinking about him. On vacation with her aunt and uncle, nothing could remind her of him and all the turmoil he caused in her mind.  
That was a plan. A fool-proof Darcy-free vacation plan.

**Author's Note:**

> The Twelfth Night quotes go back to the Arden Shakespeare edition.  
> The referenced Twelfth Night adaptation set at a hotel actually exists.  
> And the "Twelfth Night retelling but make it sci-fi" is actually a "retelling but make it Star Trek" and exists so far only in 2 pages of notes and in my head. But I kind of plan on actually writing that. (granted, someone else might have already done that and it might actually exist completely, I did not check).  
> Lizzy following Darcy on twitter is somewhat inspired by [**Not a Tweet**](https://archiveofourown.org/works/13662981)


End file.
